Help Overlap Zoo Reveal Cosmic Dust

What happened

Galaxies, vast collections of billions of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity, are scattered across the immensity of space. Explore This Section Science Citizen Science Help Overlap Zoo Reveal Cosmic… Overview Resources Opportunities Citizen Science Highlights About Science Activation Galaxies, vast collections of billions of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity, are scattered across the immensity of space.

These rare overlapping galaxies give astronomers a chance to study something normally difficult to see: the dust inside one of these distant cosmic objects. That’s the focus of NASA’s new Overlap Zoo project.

The backlit dust creates dark silhouettes, like shadows on a screen. Measurements of how dust impacts light can even help astronomers refine estimates of the distances to faraway objects.